Assignment 1 Saying Hello

I wasn’t sure if I was going to fall at the first hurdle with this assignment, not being able to use my black pen to make the preliminary sketches. I wanted to make models with plasticene for this assignment but to my surprise I found making very scribbly sketches using crayons suited the idea of the plasticene. In fact the act of drawing like this made me feel very happy.

Technical difficulties

I found the modelling quite challenging. I also then found the photography difficult. I have never been a “photographer” and struggled with my husband’s complicated camera. I will have to sort out the lighting for next time. I enjoyed the inventive side of model making, wondering what I can use to represent something.

The card

I have been through a period of great change over the past few years. I wanted the card to reflect the struggles I had gone through, coming to terms with ageing and mortality and the fact that I now feel very positive and excited about the future. Initially I had the idea of making a caterpillar, a pupae and a butterfly. Whilst I liked the idea I thought I would have to put too much text on the card as explaination. I thought around the words “change”, “reinvention”, “reincarnation” and started to draw out a little person in crayon which led to my final idea. In order to pull in several elements I decided to use a concertina format. Finally I pulled it into a rough narrative, going from gloomy to cheerful. (Obviously real life isn’t this neat!)

Reservations

It was only at the end that I thought the model looked a bit like a teenage mutant ninja turtle, not helped by the green colour I had chosen. Oh well.I was also not sure that the concertina structure worked as it was meant to so I went back and put numbers on each page.